


Family Portraits

by CastleriggCircle (BanjoOnMyKnee)



Series: Trust and Love [2]
Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 11:02:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7932151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BanjoOnMyKnee/pseuds/CastleriggCircle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a little vignette set 23 years after the end of my big post-S2 AU fic, <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/3554270/chapters/7826780">Trust and Love.</a> I wanted to show Abbie still alive DECADES from now, because I'll never accept what canon forced upon us.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Portraits

_Ashdown Manor, Hertfordshire, England – August 2038_

 

“Holy shit, Benj, that’s your dad.”

Benjamin Mills-Crane glanced at his best friend and U.S. Fencing teammate Liam before turning back to the portrait of his father as a young man, right around his own current age, painted back in 1772. “My great-great-not-sure-how-many-greats-grandfather, you mean.”

“Are you really sure he isn’t a time traveler? Because that’s way too strong a resemblance for going on three centuries.”

“Yeah, I’m positive my dad isn’t a time traveler,” he said in the same voice he would’ve used to swear his mother wasn’t a mermaid, nor his kid sister a space alien. Because it was true. Being mostly dead for over two centuries then coming back to life wasn’t time travel. His _mom,_ on the other hand…and he himself, if being whisked through a temporal vortex in your mother’s womb as a zygote counted. Really, he still wasn’t sure which had been more shocking, learning that his father had been born in 1749 or that he’d been conceived in 1781.

Liam looked from the portrait—Ichabod Crane in the red coat of a British officer, all powdered hair and stiff upper lip and gold braid—to Benjamin. “That even looks a lot like you. Nose, eyebrows, forehead…”

What would Liam do, if Benjamin admitted the truth? But he’d learned as a very young child that most of the world would consider the everyday reality of his family unbelievable. Nothing like turning in an assignment on _What I Did Last Summer_ in second grade and having the teacher laugh to your parents on what a bright future you had as a fantasy novelist, but for now you needed to learn the difference between fiction and nonfiction.

Besides…he rolled his eyes. “Now I know you’re seeing things. That guy at the front desk thought you were the one who’d emailed about coming to look at your ancestors.”

Liam raked a self-conscious hand through his blond hair. “That was just stupid assumptions. Because you look like your dad. Who looks freakishly like great-great-etcetera-grandpa here.”

“I don’t know about _freakishly._ ” Benjamin knew he looked more like his father than his mother, aside from the skin tone and hair texture that had fooled the receptionist. And maybe he shouldn’t have let Liam tag along on this little side trip before returning home from the World Championships, given that he’d come home to Sleepy Hollow with him last spring break. It just hadn’t occurred to him that the resemblance would be so obvious, given that Dad was old now—well, late middle-aged, anyway—all silver hair and glasses and weathered lines on his face.

Silver hair, duh. Of course the powdered hair in the portrait gave much the same effect. 

“But you’ve got to admit this is a huge coincidence. Ichabod Crane, English officer who deserted to the American side during the Revolution. And here’s your dad, with the same name, is English himself, but a hard-core Revolutionary re-enactor, dresses the part almost all the time, even teaches classes on it.”

Benjamin snorted. “Yeah, sure, but time travel? That’s up there with witches and ghosts and fairies.” Ben’s mother, aunt, sister, and cousin were all witches, not to mention his honorary aunt Macey Irving. The ghosts of his grandmother and his mother’s mentor August Corbin still stopped by from time to time. And he had a faerie godmother, tall and beautiful and not a little terrifying, who’d kept him safe in her people’s court as a little boy when he otherwise would’ve been in mortal danger during his parents’ battles with the Horsemen of Famine and Pestilence, the Beast from the thirteenth chapter of Revelation, and assorted other apocalyptic monsters. He’d rarely needed Coira’s protection after his parents lived out their seven years of tribulation and prevented the end of the world, but he’d promised to meet her in Scotland next week before flying back to New York.

“It’s still weird,” Liam insisted.

“Family patterns, I guess.”

“Your family is kinda weird—but in a good way.”

Benjamin couldn’t argue with that. He passed Liam his phone. “Here, take my picture. I should send it home.” Turning to stand beside the portrait, he mimicked his father’s pose, proud and aristocratic, with just the faint hint of a smile curling his lips.

As they left the manor, Benjamin texted the crisp, 3-D holographic projection to his parents, captioned _Father and Son._

A few hours later, his phone beeped at him. When he tapped the notification, a new image appeared—Mom and his kid sister Anna Grace, just turned 16, seated together in the backyard in a pose clearly meant to mimic an 18th century family portrait despite their ordinary 21st century clothes. Mom regal and serene in a wooden patio chair, one hand reaching down gracefully to scratch their silver tabby Lafayette’s ears, Anna Grace seated on the grass at her side, gazing up at her in what would’ve been adoration if she weren’t so clearly fighting to keep a straight face. The caption, naturally, _Mother and Daughter._ Then, a few minutes later, the two of them on either side of Dad. _Love you, son. See you next week._

Benjamin smiled. He loved his kinda weird family.

**Author's Note:**

> [Here's the portrait I used for 1771!Ichabod.](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:1771_portrait_paintings#/media/File:James_Duff_\(1752%E2%80%931839\).png)
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> And though it's not the same pose, [this is the sort of pastoral outdoor family portrait Abbie and Anna Grace are imitating.](http://hoocher.com/Joshua_Reynolds/Lady_Delme_and_her_Children_1777_80.jpg)


End file.
